Reimagining Your Time in Ocean City, MD
My interview with Anna Bushnell, owner of Dolle's Candyland. Can you explain the genesis of the book Dolle's Candyland and why you chose to write it now. "It was during a move where we moved from a house my father was born in. As you can imagine when you have sort of a family estate there is a lot of stuff behind the walls. I ended up moving to a larger home where my parents decided to downsize and I had boxes and boxes of photos and things from Dolle’s that are really priceless to the family. I basically became the holder of all things historical. In looking at that (the photos) it became apparent I didn’t know who a lot of the people were or where the photos were taken because my grandfather is actually the one, so it’s actually my dad’s dad, who started the business and he didn’t even have my dad until he was 55, so he was long gone before I came along. I started to investigate who were the people in the photos in part because my father had a stroke a few years back and it dawned on me that people aren’t going to be around forever so I started working on it with my father to get it all done. It has always been a dream of mine because so many people love Ocean City history and to portray that in book form is kind of my dream. Actually I started organizing the pictures before the book was even thought up. Arcadia Publishing called me about two weeks into when I decided to organize the pictures so it became very organic for me to transition it into a book." Many manufacturers claim David Bradley was one of the first sellers of salt water taffy. The legend goes that a huge storm hit Atlantic City and flooded the boardwalk. Bradley’s store was flooded and the ocean water soaked his entire stock of taffy. In one account, a young girl asked if the store still had taffy for sale. Bradley jokingly told the girl to grab some “salt water taffy.” Others refute this story by noting that Joseph Fralinger, the first to sell salt water taffy in Atlantic City, previously called salt water taffy "Ocean Wave", "Sea Foam" and then eventually "Salt Water Taffy". The saga of salt water taffy continued into the early 1920s when a candy shop owner from Atlantic City, NJ John Edminston attempted to trademark the name and was ultimately denied by the U.S. Supreme court. Is "where does the name salt water taffy come from" the number one question asked by your customers today? "We have always gone back to the Bradley legend… who knows if it’s true. With Fralinger's… they were the original salt water taffy people in Atlantic City so maybe they have a story as well. It’s a little bit confusing because people think our salt water taffy has salt in it, or that it has salt water in it. We at Dolle’s get asked that every day, but we do have salt water taffy that does have salt in it, sea salt. This taffy has become increasingly popular like salted caramel because people have grown a good taste for it" Is it true that Daniel Trimper asked your family to come to Ocean City from Brooklyn to open up a carousel? That carousel burned down in the great fire of 1925. I find it ironic that perhaps if there was no fire, it would be Dolle’s Rides in Ocean City today. "Actually I found a missing link on newspapers.com that clarifies the legend that Daniel Trimper invited my family down here. According to the newspapers my family was in Brooklyn and they moved to Baltimore where they had amusements. One side of the family would build and operate the mechanics of the rides and the other side would do the carving. My family had several carousels in parks in Baltimore and my family rented several parks with Daniel Trimper together. So my grandfather, Rudolph Dolle and Trimper were partners in renting these parks out. It’s believable that Trimper invited my grandfather to Ocean City as the Trimpers were growing Ocean City at the time. I don’t think that it would have turned into anything bigger because our merry go ‘rounds were a lot smaller than Trimpers and I think that’s why they decided not to rebuild after the fire in 1925. They had the candy thing going and it was good for business" Also while Dolles displays prominently over a store in Rehoboth Beach, DE that store is actually owned by the Pachide family, which was sold to them in 1959 by your grandfather. "Dolle's in Rehoboth vs. Dolle's in Maryland. So back in the 1920s my grandfather went up to Pennsylvania to learn more of the candy making trade and ended working with a man named Thomas Pachide. Pachide moved to Salisbury, MD and worked with my grandfather. They became business partners and started buying different properties including one in Bethany Beach and one in Rehoboth Beach. Pachide and my grandfather split the properties so that Pachide got the land in Rehoboth and my grandfather got the one in Bethany where we put a hotel. He didn’t realize by letting the name go to Pachide it would cause so much confusion. Thomas Ibach, the grandson of Pachide, is the one that owns Dolle’s in Rehoboth now. They own the rights to the Dolle name in Delaware where we own the rights in all of Maryland" How have you adopted to the social media landscape and do you consider it necessary to sell salt water taffy and other sweets?
" It’s a great tool and we can use it to show the behind the scenes at Dolle’s. For instance today my brother is going to be making some peanut brittle so I will feature it online. We never record things and save them. It’s just a live view of the day-to-day of our operation. A lot of people think we are some big corporation but it’s all families here. My kids and nephew work here so we want to show this is a family business. You know I do all my own social media. Before I worked with interns for social media content however in order to make it personal I decided to take over the social media. It gets really personal when people say bad things about Dolle’s. We seem to do better with Facebook than the other platforms and do have an Instagram page." In addition to salt water taffy your stores sell chocolate, caramel corn etc. Who decides what you sell? "So we have always sold salt water taffy, caramel corn, caramel and fudge and back in 1978 we redid this building and purchased a chocolate shop on the corner and my father wanted to get his hands into making chocolate. That business took off. We ended moving our taffy making equipment down the street and expanded the chocolate business. We also go to trade shows and learn new flavors like cotton candy flavor. We pretty much try to stay with our roots. I am sure one day our flavors will fade away and we would need to adapt to new flavors." What’s one thing people don’t know about Dolle’s or Ocean City? " This year without our foreign students, everybody here is our community. When you walk down the boardwalk, a lot of people are related to one another in many levels and a lot of times these families’ ties go back generations. We have a really tight knit community and work together closely. You may think that our competitors are our die hard enemies and we hate them, but that’s not the case at all. We rely on each other as neighbors and as good business neighbors and we definitely support one another with." Check out a segment where Anna talks about what is in Salt Water Taffy here.
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